Render the Veil
Written by Brandon Michaud, Former Student on Thursday, December 3, 2015
Render the Veil by Moon is an album filled with haunting sounds and dark tones of depression. The album was the highly anticipated follow-up of the band's previous album The Nine Gates, which was critically acclaimed. Render the Veil came out September 11. The album consists of eleven songs, making the album roughly an hour and twelve minutes.
After listening to the album, I have realized that this isn’t your classic black metal record. It strays far from the formula of bands like Darkthrone, Burzum, and Mayhem. Instead it follows a more depressive trend like bands like Leviathan and Xasthure. Render the Veil seems to make considerable use of the key board throughout the album to give it a very hollow feeling, and with song titles like "Souls Secreted in Transparent Cells” and “Tunnels of Lost Thought” it only adds on to a feeling of longing. Unfortunately, this becomes monotonous throughout the album since they use this idea in every single song.
The vocals on each one of the songs typically stay within the well common trend of brutal screaming that black metal often has. The screams themselves are all well-polished and were done with a curtain feeling of anger mixed with sadness.
The main problem I have with the drums on this album is that the tempo doesn’t seem to change that much. This unfortunately makes the album slightly boring as it goes on. The upside to this is that even though much of the album becomes a blur, it highlights the parts that are great. That is one of the great things about this album-you find yourself lost in all the fast riffs blast beats and haunting keyboard tones, yet it still highlights the parts that make you stop and question everything about anything that has ever been anything. Those parts of the album tend to slow down a lot and feel much sadder, and those parts are genius in their own way.
If you don’t like not being able understand lyrics, then you might not enjoy this album. If you realize that you should be able to tell a story without the lyrics at all and just the music alone then you might enjoy this album. Any metal head of any kind should become versed in this album at some point. It has a very hypnotic and transcendental idea and it really does take you to another place. It could potentially even ruin your day because of the emotions it might inflict upon you. All in all, it is a good album and should be listened to and deserves recognition, but there are better black metal albums.
